<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>head deep by nanodarlings (incendiarism)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25501909">head deep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendiarism/pseuds/nanodarlings'>nanodarlings (incendiarism)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired By The Lighthouse (2019), Lighthouses, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Rated For Violence, Sirens, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, Weird Dynamics, they're unhinged</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:33:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,362</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25501909</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendiarism/pseuds/nanodarlings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve got this strange game going on, Donghyuck thinks. Jaemin’s infuriating steadiness matched up against Donghyuck’s carefully constructed blankness. A push-and-pull sort of thing. Tug of war, see who snaps first. Like God’s taken two monsters and caged them together on this island.</p><p>No one gets on, no one gets off—the storms do more than enough to ensure that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Director's Cut Fest, violently tender</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>head deep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>she is done she is here! what a trip this fest has been. a huge thank you to the mods for organizing this! the concept is lovely and i've had such a fun, self-indulgent time writing. also an obligatory this is a work of fiction, please read tags and know that i do not believe that anything here reflects on what haech and jaem are like in real life.</p><p>that aside, this work is inspired by the lighthouse (2019), one of my all-time favorite movies! i don't think it's absolutely necessary to watch it before hand since, well. honestly both this work and the movie are very trippy no matter how much context you have? this fic does spoil some parts of the movie though so please keep that in mind if you wanna go in with a clean slate! other than that please enjoy! thank you for clicking &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There’s this curious mixture of sea spray, smoke, and human must in the air as Donghyuck steps off the small steam boat that brought him here and onto the shore. Lugging behind him is his suitcase carrying changes of clothes, a few odd trinkets, nothing more than the barebone necessities, as well as various other boxes full of supplies, each of varying weights. A bit of a pain to carry, but Donghyuck wouldn’t be here if he couldn’t take a bit of pain.</p><p>His shoes tap lightly on the sand as he makes his way further into the island. Standing on the edge of a cliff of rocks waits the man who Donghyuck presumes to be his host—<em>Jaemin, was it?</em>—fitted in a dark uniform and even darker hair and eyes. Hands fidgeting mindlessly from where they’re hung at his sides. Eyes dulled over by sea salt, but still with a trace of some strange twinkle lying behind the film.</p><p>It’s unnerving.</p><p>Donghyuck feels the skin at the back of his neck rise in gooseflesh.</p><p>They stare at each other, unblinking, before Jaemin nods his head every so slightly—almost imperceptibly—and hobbles off towards the house in the distance, trusting Donghyuck to follow. The foghorn sounds again, and Donghyuck flinches at the sound of it before turning to catch up to Jaemin.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>The living quarters are decent enough, all things considered. Bleak, sure, but habitable. Donghyuck can work with habitable.</p><p>Worn down floorboards, some with a nasty creak to them. The kitchen’s got one of those pump sinks, a table big enough for two (but only just), and a tiny cupboard. It’s sparse. A bit too reliant on its company to fill up the space when there is none to truly speak of.</p><p>The parlor’s better off, though not by much: a few pieces of furniture in varying conditions arranged around the room, a clock ticking along somewhere. There’s a desk sitting in one of the corners, a lock fastened to its drawer that Donghyuck tries to jimmie open with no luck after making sure no one was near.</p><p>
  <em>Damn.</em>
</p><p>Stairs carry the same persistent creaking that damns the rest of the house. Donghyuck hits his head on the entrance to the bedroom area and curses under his breath, making note to be more careful in the future.</p><p>Jaemin’s there waiting for him, sitting on one of the two shoddy looking beds and rubbing at his leg. At Donghyuck’s unceremonious arrival, he grunts and gets up. Limps to the doorway, kicking what Donghyuck presumes to be his chamber pot out of the way as he goes.</p><p>Donghyuck gives a grunt of his own back in acknowledgement before sinking into the unoccupied bed. Tries to ignore any stains on the sheets.</p><p>There’s something poking him in the back.</p><p>At first he believes it to be only another part of the bed’s dismal condition, but after shuffling around some more he digs out some odd bauble, a palm sized statue of a mermaid. Plain white ivory, marked dirtier by a few shades from wear.</p><p>Huh.</p><p>Strange.</p><p>He rubs a hand over the scales, curious, before pocketing it for later.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>The sound of the foghorn is relentless: this oppressing sort force that rings out like some sort of siren song across the island. It’s invisible. It’s crushing.</p><p>Everything around here is crushing, really.</p><p>The skies that lean overcast more often than anything else. The crashing of the waves against the rocky land. <em>The goddamn occupants… </em></p><p>Jaemin says that he’ll get used to it eventually, but Donghyuck knows better than to trust what Jaemin has to say.</p><p>No, Jaemin is all knives and sharpness when whittled down to the bone, as Donghyuck’s come to find. Pleasant enough on the surface, sure, with his charming smile that stretches across his infuriatingly good-looking face and a seemingly easy-going personality that’s quick to disarm. But pleasantries only last so long when he’s threatening to make Donghyuck replace every floorboard with his bare hands until his knuckles bleed and his nails break, all with that same damn smile on his face.</p><p>They’ve got this strange game going on, Donghyuck thinks. Jaemin’s infuriating steadiness matched up against Donghyuck’s carefully constructed blankness. A push-and-pull sort of thing. Tug of war, see who snaps first. Like God’s taken two monsters and caged them together on this island.</p><p>No one gets on, no one gets off—the storms do more than enough to ensure that.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>“Saw you pickin’ fights with the gulls the other day,” Jaemin tells him over their measly dinners, eyes wide and unblinking. They’re dangerous, those eyes. Stormy and blurred over, like someone’s drawn blackout curtains. Terribly easy to lose your bearings.</p><p>Donghyuck elects to stay silent. Pokes his fork against his lobster instead, wincing a little at the sound of it hitting the plate.</p><p>Jaemin continues: “It’s bad luck to kill a seabird, you know. Better just to leave ‘em be.”</p><p>“Hah. Bullshit,” Donghyuck scoffs.</p><p>Wrong move.</p><p>There’s the telltale screech of the chair being dragged against the floor as Jaemin stands up faster than Donghyuck would’ve thought possible, only to reach over the table and jab a rough hand underneath Donghyuck’s chin, jerking it upwards.</p><p>Jaemin stares at Donghyuck, eyes crazed and frantic.</p><p>“Bad luck,” he repeats, far more force to his voice this time, “To kill a seabird, Donghyuck.”</p><p>His voice wavers, but his gaze is steely—ice cold and dead serious.</p><p>Neither of them move for a heartbeat. Donghyuck feels his blood rush through his veins, his heartbeat thrum in his ears.</p><p>Slowly, Jaemin loosens his grip and releases Donghyuck, breaking eye contact in the process. He slumps back into his chair, shriveled up and defeated for whatever reason, and the sight is somehow more unsettling to Donghyuck than the outburst before.</p><p>“Fix us some coffee, Donghyuck. We’ve got… a long night ahead of us. Coffee’ll do us some good.”</p><p>Donghyuck nods silently and gets up, leaving Jaemin staring blankly into the distance.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>The bottle shatters not more than a foot away from where Jaemin stands, glass shards splaying out across the floor.</p><p>“Fuck off,” Donghyuck says—the tremor in his voice finding its way into his hands as well. “Just, fuck off.”</p><p>“Now, Donghyuck,” Jaemin says, looking oddly calm. “Is that any way to talk to your superior?”</p><p>“Don’t be such a bitch.”</p><p>“And what are you gonna do about it? Hmm?” Under the dim lighting and backed by the periodic flashes of lightning from the storm outside, Jaemin is carnivorous. Unkempt hair swept in all directions, lips pulled over sharp rows of teeth, and kerosene permeating his scent permanently.</p><p>Donghyuck’s hands stay shuddering. He fantasizes what Jaemin might look like lying dead on the floor, shattered bits of the bottle stuck at the center of a rapidly expanding pool of blood on his torso. Eyes wide and bugged out in surprise, maybe, or instead simply closed in resignation.</p><p>He wonders if Jaemin is doing the same to him.</p><p>They’ve had this conversation before. They’ll have this conversation again, sooner or later.</p><p>It’s always the same record—broken once, twice, until all the memories blur into one and skip back and forth with the rest. Someone says something that sets the other off onto a tantrum, and then they’re at each other’s throats.</p><p>Donghyuck is sure that one day someone is going to go too far; someone is going to end up too rotten to hold back. And he plans to be the one to walk out alive.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>“So, what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this anyways?”</p><p>Donghyuck halts from where he’s cutting up his food when Jaemin speaks. They’re running out of rations, and with no sign of the storms halting anytime soon their meal portions have gone from mediocre to barely enough to keep them going.</p><p>The hunger, it doesn’t help anything. Not the work, not the squabbling, not the… dreams. Hallucinations, nightmares. Whatever you want to call them.</p><p>The only thing that seems to be unaffected is Jaemin’s penchant for fucking <em>small talk</em>.</p><p>“What do you mean, a guy like me?”</p><p>“Oh, you know—young, healthy. No fucked up limbs or anything,” Jaemin says as he gestures to his bad leg, and then adds with a grin, “Pretty as a picture too.”</p><p>Donghyuck replies, “It’s good, honest work. I’m just tryin’ to start fresh. Nothing wrong with that.” His voice comes out all wrong, like the water from the kitchen sink that looks more like tar than anything drinkable.</p><p>He hopes Jaemin doesn’t pick up on it. That he doesn’t try to pry any further.</p><p>When he’d gone to check the cistern for the cause of the taint, he’d found the hatch propped open. Dead gulls, a good half-dozen at least swimming in the water. One not as lucky as the rest—alive still, battered and bleeding out, wailing rather pathetically.</p><p>And then there’d been another one: perfectly alive, missing an eye.</p><p>He had tried to pick at the broken seagull in the cistern. Donghyuck had beaten him into a bloody pulp.</p><p>
  <em>What was it again? Bad luck to kill a seagull?</em>
</p><p>Well. It’s too late for Donghyuck anyways.</p><p>Back at the dinner table, Jaemin looks unfortunately intrigued. “What did you do before coming here then?”</p><p>“Timber. Up North.”</p><p>“Timber?”</p><p>“Yessir.” Donghyuck stares pointedly down at his food.</p><p>They’re treading too far. They’re leaning too much into the guts shoved into the cistern.</p><p>“Got tired of trees?”</p><p>“Something like that.”</p><p>“Don’t blame you. Heard horror stories about what happens in a job like that… no thank you. The sea, she’s the only one for me.” Jaemin’s eyes dance in the faraway moonlight, dragged around by the ghosts of past lives that are no more.</p><p>Donghyuck’s posture loosens, happy to be moving on to Jaemin instead. “You miss it?”</p><p>“Can’t miss something you’ve never not known.”</p><p>Donghyuck scoffs, “Of course. Sailing though, do you miss that?”</p><p>“Oh. More than anything sometimes… there’s nothing like it, really.” Jaemin laughs a little despite himself, swimming in stories and memories. Donghyuck thinks he looks more human like this—still a hint of sea-madness tainting his visage, but with a certain sense of wistfulness, longing, regret tipping the scales.</p><p>The moment makes Donghyuck wonder if things could’ve been different had they been better people. If Jaemin could’ve been someone to find camaraderie in, someone to find companionship.</p><p>It’s a silly thought.</p><p>Donghyuck shakes it away as Jaemin says: “Not much I can do about it though, not with this stump of a leg I’ve got. No, I’m a wickie now, through and through.”</p><p>“Ah…”</p><p>They trail off into silence.</p><p>Outside, the waves tumble on—sure as ever.</p><p>Still no hope of getting out of here.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>Sleep is a tricky little thing. Slippery bastard.</p><p>It’s running away from Donghyuck, tonight. Takes him all the way to the shore, where the waves crack against the land in a strange sort of heartbeat. Over and over again.</p><p>Donghyuck is drenched.</p><p>He’s not sure whether it’s from the sea or the storm, but the cold seeps past flesh all the way down to the bone.</p><p>Something about the water beckons him further.</p><p>Donghyuck is in way over his head.</p><p>There’s a shrieking in his ear, one that’s metallic and awful and ear-splitting. It’s a siren song, most likely, and he’s the one being drawn to his watery grave. Something like the creature that floats in front of him. Gills. Fins and a tail. Mouth lolled open to show a piercing grin, sharp teeth.</p><p>They’re getting closer to Donghyuck. Moving faster.</p><p>The logical move here is to <em>run</em>, but Donghyuck is waterlogged and rapidly sinking. And there’s nothing logical about the situation.</p><p>His heart slams against his ribcage—once, twice—as the blood rushes through his veins. The creature lunges, hands outstretched towards his neck.</p><p>Donghyuck’s vision flashes red, crimson.</p><p>The scene shifts.</p><p>It’s a place Donghyuck knows well. A bit too well, if you ask him.</p><p>The trees towering over him: spruce, tamarack, white pine. He’s almost alone, save one person.</p><p>Donghyuck watches him slip, watches him get swallowed whole by the logs. His hands itch, but his feet remain firmly planted to the ground. He needs a smoke; he needs to get out of here.</p><p>There’s more red. Screaming.</p><p>And then there’s stillness.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>“I know what you did.”</p><p>Jaemin looks up at him, glass half-way raised to his lips.</p><p>They’re sitting at the dinner table. It’s always the damn dinner table.</p><p>“And that would be?”</p><p>“You killed your last second, didn’t you?” There’s a sick sort of pleasure that fills Donghyuck as he watches Jaemin’s face crumble in horror. He’s speechless, grappling for words that don’t come.</p><p>Donghyuck presses on— “I found him. His head, that is, fished up in the lobster pot. Yellow teethed, one eyed fellow. You did it, didn’t you?”</p><p>“You’re mad, Donghyuck,” Jaemin says shakily. “This old rock, it’s getting to you. Making you see things.”</p><p>Donghyuck slams down his knife forcefully. “I know what I saw, dammit! I’ve got you all figured out, Jaemin. All your little tricks and hoaxes.”</p><p>In all the time that Donghyuck has known Jaemin—the hours that stretched into days that turned into months when the storms moved in and never left—he’s never seen him this speechless before.</p><p>He’s trembling. Both of them are.</p><p>“So this is how you want to play it, Donghyuck?”</p><p>“This is.”</p><p>Jaemin’s eyes are burning this time. Something like the lighthouse that he takes so much care of.</p><p>“Have it your way then.”</p><p>There’s a fire axe, out of nowhere. Donghyuck reaches for the dinner knife. Grins a smile, rather gory.</p><p>The thunder cracks its approval. The blood rushes to Donghyuck’s ears. The games begin.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>“So, why’s it bad luck to kill a seabird anyways?”</p><p>Jaemin startles at the sudden question, gives him a pointed look. “It’s the souls that are in them. Sailors that met their maker.” His voice is grave, a hint of a rasp creeping in.</p><p>“Good to know,” Donghyuck says, trying not to scoff and failing.</p><p>Jaemin only glares at him.</p><p>They continue their meal.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you once more for reading! any and all comments are always welcome, be it here or on twt / cc~~</p><p>twt: <a href="https://twitter.com/nanodarlings">@nanodarlings</a><br/>cc: <a href="https://curiouscat.me/aphelions">aphelions</a><br/> </p><p>  <a href="https://hereinevitably.dreamwidth.org/7661.html">inspiration + additional thoughts</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>